Among swing state voters 65 and older, Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by roughly 10 percentage points....even though Obama leads overall in most of those same swing states. Voters often vote against their own interests....for ideological reasons, for prejudicial reasons, for religious reasons, etc....but seniors leaning Romney rather than Obama defies all logic.

While Mitt Romney would jeopardize the solvency of Medicare by pushing Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)......Obama, through the ACA, has extended Medicare's solvency for 8 more years. It would seem to me that seniors...on Medicare....would prefer extending Medicare's solvency rather than shortening it.

Republican President George W. Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Citizens United was the immediate consequence. Citizens United threw out 100 years of judicial precedent in asserting that private money could in no way be limited when it came to political elections. The Citizens United ruling was a classic case of judicial activism.

The Citizens ruling has led directly to the disgusting....nay, obscene....orgy of corporate and billionaire spending in the hopes of controlling the outcome of our national election this year.

During the last year of George W. Bush's presidency 3.6 million jobs in the U.S. were lost. September, 2008...nearly 432,000 jobs lost. October, 2008....nearly 489,000 jobs lost. November and December, 2008....803,000 and 661,00 jobs lost respectively. The month of Barack Obama's inauguration, 818,000 more U.S. workers lost their jobs.

Those were the conditions 'on the ground' when Barack Obama became the president. Even during a post-truth presidential election, like the one we're in the midst of right now.....those numbers should not be simply ignored, or conveniently mis-remembered.

Indiana GOP Senate candidate, Richard Mourdock....“I struggled with it myself for a long time,” he said, “but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Missouri GOP Senate candidate, Todd Akin...."First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

Many anti-Obama talking heads have insisted that the reason our economic recovery from the worst financial collapse in 80 years has been slow instead of immediate is because of "confidence."

In this interpretation, it's not because Americans have lost so much of their purchasing and asset power in the historic collapse that's keeping our economy from recovering more quickly. It's not because millions have lost jobs and homes and futures in the Great Bankster Caper of the 00's...and can't stimulate demand....that's keeping our recovery sluggish. It's not that $12.8 trillion in national purchasing power was gutted in the wake of the collapse that's preventing consumers from buying as much stuff as they were during the housing bubble.

I suppose it's arguable why the presidential election tightened considerably after the first debate. But without question....it did. What was shaping up as a blowout favoring Obama before the first debate turned into a much, much closer contest after.

Nate Silver of the NY Times now has the percentage chance for an Obama win at 68.1%, chance of a Romney win at 31.9%. Silver's popular vote calculations have Obama at 50% and Romney at 48.9%. Electoral college projections are 288.3 Obama, 249.7 Romney. So, Obama is still projected to win the election, but by a much slimmer margin.

You wouldn't know it by reading the stenographic AP piece in the Akron Beacon Journal this morning, but President Obama mopped the floor with Mitt Romney last night in what was the last of three presidential debates. It was, without doubt, the former governor's worst performance. Read transcript here. Watch debate video here.

After opening remarks were over and the back and forth began, it was obvious that all Mitt Romney had done to prepare was cram-memorize a bunch of foreign policy information that he didn't, or couldn't, fully comprehend. When Mr. Romney was not agreeing last night with President Obama's foreign policy decisions....which Romney did repeatedly.....the former governor recited, R2-D2-style, disjointed pieces-parts of what he had cram-memorized during debate preparations.

In April, 2011....just three months after Republicans captured the House, the Paul Ryan Budget was passed with only 4 Republican representatives voting against and no Democrats voting in favor. At the time many called the blue-eyed-boy's plan a bold and gutsy move that took courage.

At the time I, and many others, were astonished that Republicans in the House had actually voted to change Medicare as we've known it. Medicare is a very, very popular government program. My calculation at the time was that Republicans had just shot themselves in the foot, politically.

The Blunt Amendment.... an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to a highway funding bill, would have allowed not only religious groups but any employer with moral objections to opt out of the coverage requirement. And it would have allowed such employers to do so in the case of not only contraception but any health service required by the 2010 health-care law.

President Obama called out Mitt Romney's lies and deceptions last night in convincing fashion...often leaving the former governor reaching for his canned campaign talking points to try to run out the question clock. It wasn't pretty for the GOP nominee who has built his entire campaign on very little truth or substance.

Republican Darrell Issa spent a year and half and a million dollars holding hearings related to the ATF gun walking program Fast and Furious. There never was any there there.....but to Dipstick Darrell that never much mattered. Political theater is not called political theater for no reason. Here's Dipstick in June, just ahead of the House vote to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to do what Dipstick demanded....

“You don’t lie to Congress, and then lie about lying to Congress and then lie about knowing you lied to Congress and then not fire the people who did all of that and have it be anything but a cover-up,” Issa added.

From the moment ABC's Martha Raddatz kicked off the opening question in last night's not-debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan....it was clear. Nothing of substance would be delved into, instead it would be a night of Fox-style gotchas and campaign talking points.

As soon as Raddatz asked her first question about "intelligence failures in Libya", I turned the teevee off. The Village, aka the conventional wisdom-spouting "news" celebrities, make me sick. America does not have presidential or vice-presidential debates. What we have are 90 minute long campaign spots, interspersed with silly, pop-gotcha nonsense questions. It's all oh-so-very-stupid.

In part one of Lying for the Lord, I asked this question: What explains Mitt Romney's presidential campaign of lying and deception? Now, some might argue here that Mr. Romney hasn't, or isn't lying in his presidential campaign....hasn't tried to deceive anyone and has been truthful and honest during the entire process. If you are one of those folks, then read no further. This blog will only anger or upset you, and that's not my purpose.

Second....if you are the type of person who thinks it is "uncivil" to critique religion, that questioning the history or beliefs of religious groups should be considered taboo, or that such discussions should be avoided in order to spare the feelings of those who are members of that religious group....then please, read no further.

Some say that it all started with the inexplicable impeachment of the Democratic President Clinton. Others would suggest that it began in earnest with the selection of a U.S. president by 9 Supreme Court Justices. It gathered momentum during and after what I have often called the crime of Iraq. It made a short appearance in the person of Sarah Palin. It grew exponentially in force with the election of America's first black president and now it has taken over our entire national political discourse as evidenced in the candidacy and campaign of Mitt Romney.

I've been thinking about something for a couple of weeks, and so today seems like the day to share. Is it not true that Mitt and Paul's tax reform plan.....whatever the heck it is after last week's debate turnabout....is, by god, "not going to add to the deficit?" Mitt Romney's only consistency when talking about his tax reform plan seems to be that it will be "revenue neutral." Can we at least all agree that Romney is for revenue neutrality in whatever his tax reform plan is?

Last general election, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin diminished the integrity of the process with her clueless, evasive, zany and just-plain-silly behavior. Before that election, I predicted that Mrs. Palin had a future at Fox.....and that's where she wound up. Fox is where telegenic, yet clueless, evasive, zany and just-plain-silly people talk in front of teevee cameras.

If you remember, back in the innocent days of the 2008 general election campaign, an important issue became whether Sarah Palin lied a bit about the "bridge to nowhere." Remember that? Good times, those. In the 2012 campaign, it has become a full time job just keeping up with the boatload of lies coming from the GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The Civic was packed last night for 70 minutes-worth of get-down, blues-infused, guitar-driven, blues-rock boogie from the 4-decade-and-still-standing, L'il Ole' Band from Texas. Yes, Billy Gibbons voice is ready for the junkyard, but my-oh-my can the boomer guitarist still play that axe. Rousing renditions of "Gimme All Your Lovin", "La Grange", "Jesus Just Left Chicago", "My Head's In Mississippi" plus, plus....kept the crowd on their feet (including Mr and Mrs Reverend) for the majority of the show.

A provision of Obamacare, implemented by HHS Sec. Sebelius, includes a no-copay contraception mandate to all insurers included in the exchanges to be made available starting in 2014. Catholic leaders, fundamentalist evangelicals and, of course, libertarians, raised their voices in opposition to the contraception provision.

It was claimed, much to my astonishment, that mandating insurance companies to include no-co-pay contraception was a violation of their religious liberty. Then, as his tendency is, Rush Limbaugh raised the stakes by declaring that Sandra Fluke, who eventually testified in favor of women's access to contraception....was a "slut" for talking so openly about it. Yes, it got ugly.

Folks on the conservative right, feeling that the presidential election is slipping away from their candidate, are now desperately searching for an emotional rescue.in Wednesday night's debate. Talk of "zingers" and Mr. Romney's debating prowess fill the cable "news" shows like so many magpies chattering on a back fence.

Perhaps Mr. Romney will dazzle the first debate audience with his hip coolness. Maybe on Wednesday night Mr. Romney will finally break out of that elitist turtle shell of his...maybe Americans will discover that the former Bain Capital CEO worth a quarter of a billion....is, really, deep down,....just like us. Maybe Mitt's coolness will even out-cool Barack Obama.